The Electronic Frontier Foundation is petitioning the US Copyright Office for a DMCA exemption legalizing “jailbreaking” — modifying the devices you own so that they can run software of your choosing. The Copyright Office holds hearings every three years on DMCA exemptions and these need to be renewed at each hearing.
To highlight the need for a jailbreaking exemption, EFF has made this video showing how Sony shipped its PlayStation 3 with the promise that users could run GNU/Linux on it, a promise that was taken up by many purchasers, including the USAF, who used a room full of PS3s running Linux to make a clustered supercomputer. But Sony changed its mind and revoked the feature after the fact and began to actively pursue legal penalties against researchers who attempted to restore it.
However, in April 2010, Sony’s mandatory firmware update — version 3.21 — removed the ability to install “Other OS” — meaning no more Linux on your PlayStation. To add legal muscle to its firmware, Sony sued several security researchers for publishing information about security holes that would allow users to run Linux on their machines again. Claiming that the research violated the DMCA, Sony asked the court to impound all “circumvention devices” — which it defines to include not only the defendants’ computers, but also all “instructions,” i.e., their research and findings.
This means you can set your PlayStation on fire, but you can’t run Linux on hardware you own. To illustrate how ludicrous this is, we made a video illustrating what an owner can do with a PlayStation — and what Sony contends they can’t.
PlayStation 3 “Other OS” Saga Shows: Jailbreaking Is Not a Crime